tributes, also, $10,000 (40,000 marks) for working expenses, which last year were about $25,000. The other $15,000 was derived from the five-cent fee charged workmen for registration. The employers pay nothing because the administration in Berlin and elsewhere considers it sound policy not to have the least obstacle to employers using the Exchange. A supply of labor in most departments is always there, but the demand must be encouraged. The success of the exchanges tends toward obliging employers to apply to them for hands or have difficulty in getting them from casual sources, which are disappearing because the exchanges are monopolizing the supply. Labor has become standardized, as it were, and the personal side of the free contract between the master and man has disappeared. The sub-manager of locomotive works, for example, simply wants ten more brass-workers or twenty-five additional metal-planers, and prefers to telephone the Exchange rather than bother to send word to a waiting list or to examine the men around the yard entrance. Besides, if he has ever done business with the Exchange he has probably been satisfied with the standard quality of the men sent him. Should the manager upon seeing the men desire to reject some of them, all he need do, and that is not obligatory, is to pay their carfare back and ask for another lot to replace the ones he did not like.

The institution in Berlin has three vast apartments. One for skilled workmen, arranged according to trades, accommodates conveniently, 2,000, another 1,000 to 1,500 unskilled laborers, while the third is for women. The Exchange somewhat resembles a vast workingman's club with a women's annex. The place has about it none of the depressing suggestions of unemployment, none of that dreary atmosphere of the groups around the factory entrance waiting for something to do with all the disadvantages on the side of the individual down in the world and worried. Deserting the factory gate, he offers his services in the recognized brokerage, the one to which employers of his class of labor will, in fact must, apply. He will be registered there no longer than a day before his number is advanced on the list. Some, perhaps all, of the men who were ahead of him will have been employed. Within two

weeks, on an average, the man offering skilled labor and belonging to a union is engaged. The unemployment in Germany has ranged, during eight years, from one and one-tenth per cent of the wage-earning population in 1906, the lowest year, to two and nine-tenths per cent in 1908, the highest year since the government has calculated percentages covering the whole empire. In 1909, the percentage out of work during the year averaged two and eighttenths per cent, or an average of nine days in the year if the whole employed wagetakers are considered. Since fluctuations in employment do not affect great numbers of the employed, the period of loss of work for those actually unemployed is considerably longer. The operation of the labor bourses has the result of equalizing the terms of unemployment so that the loss of work is distributed more evenly. No individual runs the hazard of not finding work for months. The only preference on the Exchange is for married men who, as against the unmarried, are served first. Employers appear to prefer unionists for two reasons: because they have no trouble on that account with thei. other men, and because the union member is nearly always a qualified workman.

On the unskilled labor floor the waiting time is longer. During bad seasons a man may wait a month to earn the lowest wage. The waiting, whether in the skilled or unskilled divisions, is under rather agreeable conditions. The great rooms are astir with activity. Telephone bells, the communications of sub-managers to the classified sections, the summons of a coppersmith from his group, or of five glass-blowers, or a dozen steam-fitters from their divisions, engage the interest of the newcomer. Checkers, dominoes, and chess are played, but no cards. The restaurant supplies a meal, a drink, and a cigar for seven and a half cents (thirty pfennigs)-ten pfennigs for two rolls, another ten for sausage, five for beer and five for a cigar. Then from 400 to 600 persons are employed every day, or, to be precise, 447 on an average for each working-day. The man-out-of-work may go home without a job, but he has had a not unpleasant day talking politics, playing a game, getting a dinner at the lowest price, and if he needs them the attentions of clothesmenders, cobblers, and barbers, so

left a good front toward the fler of the vooie is psycho

ward the supply is Employers offered THE MEN Women and girls and uny zákl; accepted Sverige of be in the hundred

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one of the smallest in OF OLUN DECLuse both mis Et the neighborhood the more for venient. The govern tal rate agencies 01 nr ies and of Sowever the serentered tienerve at the Ex= 15% wool service from THE MESTA in this Tph #20000mnet In the

government that during the first quarter of 1909 forty-eight were out of work. The largest number in any quarter of the year was 253, while during the same year thirtyseven per cent of the journeymen barbers were unengaged at one time.

The number of unemployed in Germany appears to be smaller, relatively, than in other industrial countries. Internatior al comparisons are difficult because of the offferent methods used by the labor departments in various countries in obtar ng bigures of unemployment The Bright Board of Trade issued in January of this year a fourth officia compilation of foreig labor sutistics, in vinich percentures were giver of the fructuations Lempiorment i Germary, the United States France by gium and Denmark based upon the repona of trade unions to the government of the Europeart countries mentioned and it the State governments of Nev York and May sachusett The percentages of unen

bourses in intimate co-operation. They do not originate opportunities to work. They do take over the task of seeing that neither the machinery of production nor the man willing and competent to produce shall be hindered from coming into relations by so much as an hour of delay preventable by intelligence and organization.

Not far from where employable labor waits in Berlin for opportunity is the vast asylum for the night (Nachtasyl) maintained by the municipality. It is a last crumbling foothold of those mostly unem

ployable before the police arrest, and the magistrate condemns to forced labor on the city sewage farms. There from 3,000 to 5,000 men, women, and children are fed and lodged for the night, but they may not be taken in oftener than five nights in three months. The stream of broken lives flowing through those iron-bedded halls sends a rivulet to the Exchange which undertakes to do for the man on the edge of the abyss what he cannot do for himself. The others, society cannot yet tell why, disappear into the depths.

V

ICTOR MAUREL, the greatest acting singer this country has known, once wrote to a Parisian journal of seeing Richard Mansfield play the character part of "Prince Karl," and praised, in especial, the facility and verisimilitude with which Mansfield imitated with his voice different musical instruments and the voices of other people. The French artist described the somewhat nasal timbre of Mansfield's natural voice as being more or less typical of the American speaking voice in general, and held this fundamental quality to indicate the capacity for vocal development that is so notable among our singers in the operatic world to-day. But foreign observers, as a rule, have been much less laudatory in their comments on the American voice and have discovered in it a twang and a strenuous note distressing both to ears and to sensibilities. We, on our side, have accepted these strictures with meekness, admitting their justness and deploring dispiritedly our own vocal shortcomings, but making little or no attempt to better a remediable situation.

Some of these critics have maintained that, owing to our abominably changeable climate, we are all, in some degree, sufferers from catarrh, so that our national nose is in a chronic state of "no thoroughfare" hence our high-pitched and nasal tones. This explanation is hardly to be taken seriously, and I, for one, do not believe that we are a more catarrhal people than are the inhabitants of any other country within the north temperate zone. Our American winters, so full of bright sunshine and bracing air, are, despite the sudden changes in temperature and the occasional severe storms, quite as healthful, I am sure, as the dank, sunless winters of London, Paris, Milan, and Berlin.

The American voice is not inherently (or catarrhally) nasal or unmusical, but it is certainly crude and uncultivated. Its disagreeable qualities are due to our generally

slovenly utterance and to our neglect of the mere technique of speech. Under cultivation our voices are as beautiful as any. Our best actors, a few public speakers like W. J. Bryan and President Eliot, and our singers in every opera-giving country furnish ample proof of this assertion. As a people, we are lamentably careless in our speech. Our restless, hasty lives drive from our minds the impulse for self-culture that would lead us to train intelligently the mechanism of vocal expression.

"Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, -an excellent thing in woman"-because the tones of the voice betokened the lovely qualities of tenderness, unselfishness, and humility. No organ of the body is more truly indicative of character and mental states than is the voice. A melodious voice attracts us; a strident voice repels us. A strain of sentiment creeps into our voice, and our hearers sense at once the feeling behind it. A shadow in the voice, and instinct straightway guesses the lurking insincerity or falsehood. A friend of mine maintains that he can read character correctly at the first hearing of a voice. persuasive power lies in a noble, mellifluous utterance! Bryan's sonorous, fluent tones are among his most effective oratorical weapons.

What

The physical conformation of the throat and head has much to do with the power and quality of the voice, but in this matter psychology plays quite as influential a part as physiology. If we are a hasty, strenuous, and materialistic people, our voices will inevitably tell the story, and not till we have mended our tense, eager, self-seeking ways shall we learn to speak altogether melodiously.

But it is not my intention here to preach the simple life. I wish only to enter a plea for a greater attention to the purely physical aspects of the question. The study of voice production, whether for singing or for speaking, may, in a general way, be divided into two parts. One concerns itself with the column of air, the base of which rests